A 'Knight' to remember: This Batman tale is electrifying and complex

If your concept of a Batman movie was defined back in the mid-'90s, when director Joel Schumacher's BATMAN FOREVER and BATMAN AND ROBIN surrounded Gotham City's masked avenger with flashy, "Circus of the Stars"-style cornball campiness, get ready to have your head turned around. Director Christopher Nolan's THE DARK KNIGHT exists in an entirely different world.

One of the many fascinating aspects of this electrifying follow-up to BATMAN BEGINS is the way it manages to carefully maneuver between the kinds of sequences you'd expect from a Batman film (including high-speed chases, flying stunts, and the debut of the Bat-Pod, a stripped-down and pumped-up motorcycle) and a sophisticated crime drama that directly comments on the current political atmosphere, in which put-upon people seem to be starved for any kind of hope.

Nolan's screenplay (co-written with his brother, Jonathan) follows in the footsteps of BEGINS, which presented the transformation of the wealthy, haunted Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) into Gotham's guardian angel as a thought-provoking psychological thriller.

KNIGHT builds on that concept and boldly rewrites director Tim Burton's 1989 BATMAN, in which Jack Nicholson's gleefully malevolent Joker bedeviled Batman (Michael Keaton). While Burton's film was a twisted comedy, propelled by Nicholson's charmingly wicked performance, KNIGHT is powered by an entirely different kind of energy. There's nothing endearingly daffy about Heath Ledger's recasting of the Joker.

This man is a merciless, dyed-in-the-wool psychopath who delights in maiming and murdering anyone who gets in his way; he knows he's demented -- he's a self-described "agent of chaos" who admits to being "a dog chasing cars; I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it" -- but that's the world's problem, not his.

His face covered in messy, flaking makeup that seems to symbolize a decayed soul, Ledger gives a ragingly raw performance designed to make your skin crawl. He speaks in a gnarled, affected voice, like a schoolyard bully talking down to his targets, and makes a habit of constantly calling attention to his horribly scarred, brightly painted mouth. His tangled mass of greenish yellow hair is reminiscent of the snakes sprouting from Medusa's scalp.

"You wanna know why I use a knife?" he hisses to a police officer. "Guns are too quick -- you can't savor all the little emotions."

Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) is torn between fighting crime and giving in to his darker nature in THE DARK KNIGHT.

On the opposite side of the moral spectrum is Gotham's "white knight" Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), a hard-driving district attorney who's determined to shut down Gotham's underworld. Although Batman is officially considered a vigilante, Dent has a grudging respect for the mystery man. "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain," Dent theorizes, words that will soon take on an ironic ring.

Most of KNIGHT was shot in and around recognizable Chicago locations, which often call to mind another great crime story filmed in the same city: THE UNTOUCHABLES. As in that film, supposedly "decent men," such as Dent and Wayne, come to realize that in order to fight evil they must sometimes sidestep their own moral codes. Nolan has fun setting up the dark-haired, low-key Bale and towheaded, charismatic Eckhart as twin sons of different mothers, each seeking the same results -- and the same woman, lawyer Rachel Dawes (an underused Maggie Gyllenhaal, picking up Katie Holmes' former role) -- but traveling on different paths.

Nolan stages several brilliant, breathlessly paced action sequences and creates a few memorably creepy images, such as a fire engine wrapped in flames, or the sight of the Joker's vandalized circus van, on which the benign slogan "laughter is the best medicine" has been turned into "slaughter is the best medicine."

KNIGHT is even more impressive, however, for its brainpower and its determination to locate that shady middle ground between good and evil. In the same way that someone can be a "terrorist" in the eyes of some and a "freedom-fighter" in the opinions of others, Batman is painted here as a conflicted warrior who is questioning his standing in the world even before the Joker finds an ingeniously evil way to turn the public against him. Dent follows a similar track, which ultimately forces him to decide whether he's a dedicated crusader or just another hollow politician who crumbles under pressure.

Nolan has put together a compelling, even daring companion piece to BATMAN BEGINS that shows his first time out was no fluke. THE DARK KNIGHT has suspense, shocks, style and substance, proving that a superhero's best partner is a superb filmmaker.